Pirate Streaming Platforms and Everything You Need To Know About Them
Table of Contents:
Streaming Services Are The New Reason For Piracy
Pirate Streaming Service “Popcorn Time” Introduces Kids Mode (2020)
Pirates Turned Out to Be Large Consumers of Legal Content
The USA Became The World Leader in The Number of Visits to Pirate Sites
Piracy Puts Ordinary Users At Risk
IT Industry And Economy Are Stalled Because of Pirates
During a pandemic, all we want to do is nothing, sometimes with some good film or TV series. In 2020, there are a huge number of different streaming platforms where you get access to a huge amount of resources for a minimal subscription fee. It seems to be simple, isn’t it? But people are not looking for such “easy” ways. Many simply decided to feel like Jack Sparrow. Correction, Captain Jack Sparrow, and become a pirate. But not everyone thinks about what is bad and what may be the consequences.
There are a lot of streaming platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, Disney +, Amazon Prime, Showtime, HBO Now, and others. But in the same way, there are a bunch of pirated resources: 123movies, torrents, online movies, Piratebay, 1337x proxy, Movies Ki Duniya, and others.
Twift and I do not recommend using pirate streaming platforms. But you’ve heard about them, and you might even like to use them. I will try to talk about this topic and convince why you should not do this, even though there are some “advantages” of such offenses.
How IT All Began
Several hundred years ago, piracy moved from sea to land, and at the end of the 20th century, it settled on the Internet.
Journalists analyze the past decade in piracy and conclude that despite the serious efforts of the copyright lobby, piracy almost did not lose its audience, moving from torrents to streaming.
TorrentFreak
In early 2010, the internet piracy ecosystem looked very different from what it is today. At that time, neither streaming services nor IPTV were popular. The main piracy program was LimeWire, and in terms of traffic, torrent sites such as BTJunkie, isoHunt, and Mininova dominated.
Today LimeWire is a distant past and all the aforementioned torrent sites are gone. Many other things have changed too. Below you will read about the most important events of the last ten years.
Ten Years of Pirate Services
2010
The decade began with an attack of copyright holders on torrent sites and the aforementioned LimeWire. In 2010, a Swedish court handed down a final verdict in the Pirate Bay case, imprisoning its founders Peter Sunde for eight months, Fredrik Neuja for ten months, and Karl Lundstrem for four months. Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfried Svartholm did not attend the trial but was later sentenced to a year in prison.
In the same year, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) won a lawsuit against the mother of four, Jamie Thomas-Russet. The court ordered the woman to pay $1.5 million for 24 songs that she shared through Kazaa. After the appeal, the amount was reduced to $222 thousand. LimeWire was closed soon after. This year, copyright holders began to file a lot of lawsuits against users of torrent sites.
2011
Due to pressure from the entertainment industry, Google began censoring piracy-related keywords in its searches. The company removed phrases like The Pirate Bay and RapidShare. Besides, there were initiatives to reduce the ranking of pirated domains in search results. In March 2011, the foundations were laid for the infamous SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act).
In the same year, Europe witnessed one of the largest pirate crises in history. The popular streaming movie portal Kino.to was shut down and a dozen people associated with the site were arrested. Also, there was arrested Richard O’Dwyer, a 23-year-old TVShack administrator from the UK. The following year, he successfully fought off extradition from the United States. Kim Dotcom’s largest file-hosting Megaupload released the song Megaupload, promoting the site by such superstars as P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg, and Kanye West.
2012
The new year kicked off with historic protests by community organizations ‒ Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Reddit, Green Peace, EFF, and others ‒ against the SOPA and PIPA bills. Sites temporarily suspended their work in protest and posted banners. The battle was won and the US Congress dropped the bills.
The headlines this year were dominated by a raid against Megaupload when Kim Dotcom was arrested in New Zealand and his site shut down at the request of the Virginia attorney. The criminal prosecution destroyed the file-sharing business, and today Kim Dotcom and several former colleagues are still awaiting a final decision on possible extradition to the United States.
2013
The Film Industry Association of America won a piracy lawsuit against the file hosting service Hotfile, which agreed to pay $80 million. True, this figure was named for intimidation, to scare the public: the parties eventually settled the dispute for $4 million.
Kim Dotcom launched Mega as the successor to the closed Megaupload. Mega remains popular today, although it is no longer associated with Kim.
The law firm Prenda was caught uploading its torrents to Pirate Bay, having created bait for people who were later sued for pirated downloads.
2014
A new app called Popcorn Time was a hit when it offered BitTorrent-based streaming in a user-friendly Netflix-style interface. After harassment by lawyers, the developers closed it a few weeks later, saying they wanted to move on. By that time, the application had been picked up by other people who spread and continued developing the project.
Pirate Bay was shut down after Swedish police raided a data center near Stockholm. The police confiscated dozens of servers that many believed belonged to the torrent site. Pirate Bay later denied that the police had taken anything useful.
The music and film industries and several of the UK’s leading Internet service providers have agreed to an anti-piracy agreement. As part of the agreement, BPI and the MPA will ensure that people are illegally sharing files and that ISPs send them warning emails. Sending letters had its start only in 2017.
Also in 2014, hackers attacked Sony. Among other things, the leaked documents detailed how Hollywood planned to fight piracy in the coming years. Hackers had stolen several unreleased Sony films and uploaded them to torrent sites.
2015
This year, the famous TV torrent distribution group EZTV completed its work due to the aggressive takeover of this company by another one ‒ EZCLOUD LIMITED.
Also, the year was marked by the fact that the first four episodes of the new season of Game of Thrones leaked online the day before the official premiere. The leak sparked a spike in downloads from torrent sites, but the real pirate boom came a few weeks later when 258,131 people simultaneously shared a torrent with the season finale. This is a record in history and it has not yet been broken.
Also in 2015, the Stockholm District Court ruled to confiscate both thepiratebay.se and piratebay.se domains, claiming they were linked to copyright crimes. In response to this decision, the torrent site started using a bunch of new domains like thepiratebay.GS, LA, VG, AM, MN, and GD.
2016
The torrent search engine Torrentz.eu closed, saying goodbye to millions of users. The search engine didn’t have its torrents, but it was linked to other sites like Pirate Bay. Soon after the completion of the work, a new search engine Torrentz2.eu, created by other people, took off.
Pirate Bay in turn returned to its original.ORG domain. The torrent site had left it a few years earlier to hedge against possible hijacking. Also, Pirate Bay facilitated the arrest of two executives of the aforementioned law firm Prenda, which posted its torrents on sites, to then sue the people who downloaded the files. They were charged with fraud, money laundering, and perjury.
MUSO has released a piracy statistics report showing that the piracy situation has continued to evolve. However, there has been a clear shift from torrents to direct downloads and streaming sites.
2017
Several well-known companies in the entertainment industry have created another anti-piracy group, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment. The huge anti-piracy coalition includes not only members of the Film Industry Association of America but also such giants as Amazon, Netflix, CBS, HBO, BBC, Disney, and Warner Brothers. In the following years, the Alliance filed several lawsuits against pirate streaming service providers such as TickBox and Set-TV.
The popular anime torrent site NYAA voluntarily closed down later that year. Several people indicated that the NYAA owner decided to do this voluntarily.
In the same year, there was a lawsuit involving Sci-Hub, the scientific “Rutracker”. Alexander Elbakyan has lost two lawsuits for $15 million from Elsevier and $4.8 million from the American Chemical Society. The money was not collected, since Elbakyan does not live in the United States. Despite the court decisions, the site still works today.
2018
One of the largest torrent sites, Demonoid, was closed. The invasion of copyright trolls, claiming non-existent copyrights, continued, but in one high-profile case, justice triumphed. The US Court of Appeal ruled in Cobbler Nevada v. Gonzalez. The court ruled that the mere identification of a registered subscriber by IP address is not enough to claim that the person is a copyright infringer. The new order also affected several other cases.
2019
Last year saw the relaunch of the Demonoid site and the simultaneous attacks on several pirate sites such as Xtream, Openload, Gears Reloaded, and others.
The employees of the already mentioned law firm Prenda finally got their terms for copyright trolling. John Steele received five years in prison, and his colleague Paul Hansmeier 14 years, but he is appealing this decision.
Disney launched its Disney+ streaming service, which immediately attracted millions of subscribers. While this seems like a positive step, the fragmentation of legal streaming services could lead people to continue pirating content as many simply cannot or do not want to pay for multiple services at once.
In this decade, as pirates moved from torrenting to pirate streaming, no one but Pirate Bay seems to have jumped into that niche. The famous torrent site created its own streaming service Baystream, which allows you to watch videos right in your browser.
Streaming Services Are The New Reason For Piracy
It was said they would destroy the Piracy, not join them!
Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video should have dealt, if not kill, then at least a devastating blow to online piracy, and to some extent, they even succeeded. Why steal all sorts of shows when you can subscribe to them inexpensively? Nevertheless, piracy has begun to gain traction, and the streaming platforms themselves are to blame.
Network giant Sandvine has published some interesting statistics. It turned out that the amount of downloaded content from torrent trackers increased by 32%, although it has been actively decreasing over the past few years. Sandvine’s vice president of global marketing, Cullen, says he doesn’t want to jump to conclusions, but he thinks it is about over-exclusivity.
Let’s say you like four series from four different streaming services. Each subscription costs $10. You, as an honest and decent user, have to buy subscriptions for everything in order to watch TV shows and spend $10 for each. Someone will say that it is cheap, while someone will find it easier to download the desired content from the tracker without any subscriptions since the honest way is too expensive.
Cullen thinks so too. He says that paying 10 bucks to subscribe to one service isn’t that expensive. But if you want to watch various exclusive content, then after several months it can result in a tidy sum. People tend to buy subscriptions to two different services, and some of the things, outside the US, are poorly distributed. As a result, a situation may arise that you will not have a legal way to watch your favorite show at all, or if it does, it will be in disgusting quality.
Moreover, in 2018 it became very easy for people to pirate. For example, you can watch videos while downloading via uTorrent. But the main factor behind the rise of piracy is still exclusivity. Services should work hard to rectify the situation: to make more affordable tariffs and establish a normal distribution of series around the world.
Pirate Bay (2020)
More and more people are watching videos online using streaming services like Apple, Netflix, Disney, and pirates are keeping up with the times. The largest and oldest pirate site, The Pirate Bay, has launched its streaming video service.
Some video titles on this site now have a B icon next to their titles. By clicking on it, the user goes to the BayStream streaming service, where you can watch content online without downloading.
The service does not use central servers for playback, like most other streaming services. BayStream data is the same torrents hosted in user repositories around the world.
This is not the first attempt by The Pirate Bay to implement online torrenting. In 2016, the site allowed direct browser playback through integration with the Torrents Time plugin.
Founded in 2003, The Pirate Bay is today the largest torrent file distribution portal. It is included in the 200 most popular sites on the Internet. Copyright holders are doing their best to close this portal. They got Google to remove all links to pirated sites from the first page of their search results. In a week, traffic from Google from pirates, including The Pirate Bay, more than halved. Google also collects messages from copyright holders by removing links to unlicensed materials from the search. Links to The Pirate Bay are also blocked by Facebook and Microsoft, and the resource itself is not available in some countries.
Pirate Streaming Service “Popcorn Time” Introduces Kids Mode (2020)
The streaming pirate service Popcorn Time has introduced a kids’ mode. Apparently, the platform is trying to meet the increased needs of the market: users of all ages have recently been sitting at home and consuming more content than before.
Popcorn Time is a streaming service that allows users to use torrents to watch movies online without downloading them. The original site was shut down back in 2014, after which Popcorn Time relaunched on mirrors several times. On March 17, Pirated Netflix back to live again. According to Engadget, the revival of the service during the coronavirus pandemic is most likely no coincidence, as many users who have probably lost their jobs cannot afford to subscribe to legitimate streaming services.
“Don’t forget that using Popcorn Time is still piracy. And depending on your location, you may have to face the real consequences of using it,” emphasizes Engadget.
In 2015, one of the Hollywood studios had already filed a lawsuit against users of Popcorn Time. Back then, The Wall Street Journal reported that Millennium Films, which was responsible for the production of films such as The Expendables, Drive Angry and London Has Fallen, sued 16 users of the service after it discovered that they had illegally shared direct-to-DVD copies of The Revenant.
The production company representing Millennium Films said it was tracking the defendants by their IP addresses and planned to identify the defendants by suing the Internet service providers. At the same time, in 2015, two heads of Popcorn Time websites in Denmark were arrested. In April 2015, the UK Supreme Court ruled to block access to websites hosting Popcorn Time software.
New Radio (2020)
The AllTheStreams.fm website has appeared on the network, where you can watch the content of popular streaming services, including Netflix, Hulu, Disney +, Amazon Prime, Showtime, and HBO Now for free.
However, the user cannot select a specific movie or series. You can only specify the platform of interest. The broadcast is in random order. What you see depends entirely on the authors of the site. The language of the broadcast is also not given. The site looks like a mixture of radio and TV, with a small screen and a slider on which the streaming services offered for viewing are located. Between platforms, you can either switch by clicking on stations.
At a time when “to be continued” increasingly resembles the garbage chosen by an algorithm, pirate radio offers a kind of human solution against the background of unlimited choice. We intend to play whatever we want whenever we want. We’re going to create a Frankenstein monster from the content. Streaming platforms would never recommend this to you because they might lose money on their exclusive projects because of it. Relax and have fun: like all pirates, we do this for you ‒ the creators of All The Streams.
The creators of AllTheStreams.fm note that the idea of the site is to allow all users to watch movies and series from the most popular streaming platforms without paying a significant amount for access to each of the services. For example, a subscription to all streaming platforms that are now represented on All The Streams costs more than $60, which not everyone can pull.
Pirates Turned Out to Be Large Consumers of Legal Content
More than 90 percent of people who illegally download songs, movies, and other materials use legal services to view their content. Among those who are not engaged in piracy, this figure was lower, according to the Torrent Freak website.
Today, many media companies introduce anti-piracy policies and try to combat the free distribution of copyrighted material. Nevertheless, the measures taken do not always turn out to be effective ‒ there are many ways to bypass blocking on the Internet, and there are also many sites where movies and music can be downloaded for free. On the other hand, numerous studies show that pirates do not always use exclusively illegal methods. Polls by British and French agencies have shown that consumers of illegal content also pay more money to media companies than those who do not break the law.
A poll by anti-piracy firm MUSO reiterates that many pirates subscribe to legal streaming services. The study has involved a thousand residents of the UK, but its data are in closed access, so it is not possible to assess the representativeness of the sample and the research methodology. About 60 percent of those surveyed admitted that in the past they had illegally watched or downloaded films and TV series, and also listened to music. However, the study also showed that 83 percent of pirates searched for content on legal sites before taking advantage of alternatives.
On average, 86 percent of those surveyed reported that they subscribed to services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, and Apple Music. However, it is noteworthy that this number turned out to be higher for those who break the law than for those who do not illegally download and distribute materials ‒ 91 percent versus about 80 percent. The main reasons for piracy were the inability to access content legally (35 percent), the complexity of the process (34 percent), or too high price (35 percent). It is worth noting that most pirates are aware that they are “doing wrong.” More than half of them, 53 percent, believe that piracy is bad.
Piracy is found not only in the entertainment industry but also in the scientific community. Last year, there was a big scandal involving Scientific Reports, a subsidiary of Nature. It published an article by Chinese scientists with an algorithm similar to which had already been published by another researcher earlier.
The USA Became The World Leader in The Number of Visits to Pirate Sites
The largest increase in traffic in recent years was shown by pirate sites in the United States. In December 2019, US residents generated 1.2 billion visits to them, reports torrentfreak.com, citing a study by MUSO.
According to the most recent data from the piracy tracking company MUSO, Russia is in second place (737 million visits), India is in third (627 million), China is fourth (608 million), and Brazil is fifth (559 million).
The entertainment industry is hit hard by piracy, say analysts. One of the key strategies that Hollywood productions have used in recent years is blocking pirated websites.
However, something else is interesting: the country that generates the most traffic to pirate sites is the United States itself. This has been happening for years, and the latest data provided by MUSO shows that the situation has not changed so far.
According to analysts, in the United States, there are 4.17 visits to pirated sites per month per user (in Russia this figure is slightly higher ‒ 7.21). We also found that two-thirds of pirated traffic comes from streaming services, 19% to free download sites, 8% to torrent sites, and 5% to stream rippers.
Top 10 Pirate Bay Alternatives
The Pirate Bay is constantly undergoing scrutiny and legal problems, with many wondering how long the site will be online. Even Peter Sunde, former spokesman and co-founder of The Pirate Bay, is pessimistic about the site’s future. But this has never been a problem for the pirates. There are always those who want to bypass the license and love freebies. There are a huge number of torrent sites and here are the most popular ones:
1. YTS.AG
Have you ever heard of YTS or YIFY? Not many people. If you are one of those wondering if YTS.ag is associated with them in any way, then the answer is a resounding “No”. While these other sites may not be happy with the upstart taking on their brand names, YTS.ag has been tried and tested – withstanding the test of time.
The entire site is gorgeous and minimalist with movie and TV show thumbnails so it’s easy to find. You probably won’t realize how useful movie poster thumbnails are until you use YTS.ag. Especially if you are the type of people who visit torrent sites without a clear purpose.
The site is divided into categories such as Recent Torrents, Popular Downloads, and Upcoming Movies. However, as you would expect, you can also search for the movie you want using the search bar.
2. Torrentdownloads
If you’ve been downloading torrents for a while, then you probably know about downloading torrents. They have been around for as long as anyone can remember, and although they are not available in many countries around the world, they are still very available in the US. Even though Torrentdownloads is blocked in your country, there are so many mirrors that it is quite easy to access the repository of torrent links.
In terms of navigation, Torrentdownloads are slightly different. Unlike other sites where you see different categories of what you can download (like music, movies, TV shows, etc.), Torrentdownloads only contains a list of Today’s torrents and Yesterday’s torrents, so you can easily keep current with new releases. Apart from the above two categories, this is about it. No forums, no reviews, no comments. This is really all about torrenting with Torrentdownloads.
3. Idope.se
It’s not a well-known torrent site, but it’s still one of the favorites. What really sets it apart is the fact that it offers its users a free mobile app – perfect for those who torrent while on the go, in the office, or at their local Starbucks. The app is a huge addition to the torrent community and makes it one of the most exciting torrent sites around. Even though it is still underground, it won’t be long before it becomes one of the most talked-about torrent sites on the web. Mark our words.
4. 1337x
If you’ve been to several of these sites, you’ll notice that they all have a similar layout. Torrent sites are usually very simple and focused on content rather than how good they look. 1337x, however, stands out for its very modern and stylishly designed website, which doesn’t give you the feeling of being on a sketchy torrent site. You will be able to scroll through movies and TV shows by browsing thousands of thumbnails, making it much easier to find what you want.
As with YTS.AG, this visual approach is perfect for those who haven’t come up with their own preconceived notions of what they want to download yet. Of course, if you’re that inclined, a simple torrent search will also yield thousands of results.
1337x also has a strong user community, so you can discuss torrents in the forums as well as using their built-in chat feature. These community-oriented features mean you are likely to be confident that the content you download is free of viruses or other malware.
5. Zooqle
Zooqle is listed because all Bitsnoop data has been provided to them. Bitsnoop used to be one of the largest torrenting databases, however, they have been shut down. Instead, they sent their 18 million files to Zooqle, one of the largest databases in torrent history. If you want a wide variety, be sure to check them out.
6. Torrent Funk
It is actually a pretty popular torrent site that is being updated to allow comments. They also provide you with verified status on torrents, however commenting always provides more security for users. The only problem is that there are many advertisements out there, so navigating through them can be a little tricky and annoying. But when it comes to what they provide you, Torrent Funk offers a fresh layout with endless torrents for you to choose from.
7. EZTV.AG
As you may know, the original torrent site EZTV was shut down in 2015 due to domain name ownership issues. However, it has regrouped and now operates under EZTV.ag, which has allowed it to continue to release verified torrents. It’s easy to use and doesn’t aim for anything fancy, but it still gives you what you need. There is also a forum page where you can discuss torrents and other topics, as well as a countdown list of recently released shows.
8. Torlock
This is an unusual torrent site compared to the others we have listed so far. Torlock is a site where they pay their users a commission to detect fake torrents and report it to the torrent community. Torlock is a fantastic site to use as it literally brings you the highest quality torrents. If you are constantly downloading corrupted and fraudulent files, try this.
9. Limetorrents
No, it is not even remotely related to the once-popular P2P tool, Limewire. This means you won’t be downloading tons of viruses like you did around 2004. Limetorrents is another good torrent site that offers a large selection of movies, music, TV shows, etc. It is easy to use and has a very easy download method. Limetorrents also launched the iTorrents torrent cache, which is currently being used by other torrent search engines. So, as you can see for yourself, it’s a damn reputable torrent aggregator.
10. RARBG
If you’re looking for an easy-to-use torrenting interface, RARBG is a great torrent site that’s very easy to navigate. Movies and TV shows have thumbnails as well as preview links, so before you start downloading you will be given a quick overview of what you are downloading. You have an endless number of movies and shows to choose from, which means you never have to get bored again.
11. TorrentProject
TorrentProject doesn’t usually appear in the top ten torrent site listings – until now. We love this very much because it has an elegant and fast torrent search engine. There aren’t any bells and whistles like chat options or community forums, but that’s not the point of this site. Better than anyone else, they collect, search, and verify torrent data from over 300 other torrent sites. For the end-user, this means you can literally find anything. This alone sets him apart from the rest.
Most Famous Online Cinema Sites
Despite the fact that piracy is bad, the creators of pirated sites sometimes even exceed licensed ones. After all, they need to lure the audience with something, sometimes they do it with convenience, sometimes with beauty. I also want to show you the best pirate sites with online cinemas.
1. SOAP2DAY
Soap2Day is one of the most visited free movie and show sites. Although the interface is not like Pirate Bay, the website provides almost the same kind of streaming.
This site features a full range of movies and shows, including the most recent as well as older titles and episodes.
You can watch the content for free if you’re okay with frequent ads and pop-ups. However, if you want ad-free you can subscribe to the Soap 2 Day VIP.
Soap2Day has a neat, clutter-free interface with easily selectable categories and genres. The site also has limited sports content.
Ad-free access with pay
HD streams
Subtitles
Access without registration
The free version does not require payment
Website – https://soap2day.com/
2. FMOVIES
FMovies is one of the big names in the world of free online streaming sites. It has a huge library of movies and shows. The site updates the content as soon as new videos appear.
FMovies home page has a large search box. You can use it to search for any particular movie or show. At the top, you will find a menu bar that features various categories including Trends, TV Shows, Movies, Episodes, and Top IMDBs.
F Movies offers Full HD streaming.
Specifications:
Subtitles
No registration required
No credit card required
HD streams without input
4K streams with free account registration
Autoplay next episode
Link to the site – https://fmovies.to/
3. PUTLOCKER.VIP
This site has the same name and logo as the original Putlocker site. Thus, there is every chance that this is the official Putlocker website. However, we cannot say for sure.
You can get started by selecting your streaming options from the menu bar at the top. Options include Genre, Country, Movies, TV Shows, Best IMBD, and News.
This Putlocker website has an updated design. However, if you are a fan of the old design, there is the option to switch with one click.
The Putlocker website features all the popular titles and shows you can think of. However, be prepared to experience frequent commercials and pop-ups.
Specifications
Access without registration
No credit card required
Subtitles
Autoplay Next
Multiple servers
Link to the site – https://putlocker.vip/
4.123Movies
123movies is a very popular web streaming service. It has been around for quite some time. Like Putlocker, this service has also changed domains several times.
Whether you are looking for movies or TV shows, you will find it all here. The site contains all the latest movie releases, as well as episodes.
The 123 Movies homepage is well thought out. The content is sorted into various useful categories. It also has a main menu at the top with options like Home, Browse, Genres, Countries, Years, etc.
When you select a movie or episode, the website will choose the best link to play. It will also build some streaming links in case you want to make a choice yourself.
Even though 123 movies is ad-supported, commercials or pop-ups don’t appear very often. Therefore, I believe that it is a worthy alternative to Putlocker.
Specifications
No registration required
No credit card required
HD quality
Website – http://wvw1.123movies.net/
5. FILMS JOY
This is another beautifully designed free website for streaming movies and TV shows. The main page of the site displays popular and popular movies by default. You can quickly switch to TV shows with one click.
The website menu bar allows you to filter/sort your content by genre, country, and movie & TV show. You can also search for specific content using the search option.
Movies Joy is free and ad-supported. Some of the pop-ups looked suspicious. So avoid clicking on any ads.
Specifications
Mainly HD quality
Play without registration
No payment information required
Subtitles
Link to the site – https://www1.moviesjoy.net/
6.YESMOVIES
If you’re still looking for an alternative to Pirate Bay, YesMovies.ag is another website you can try. This website is beautifully designed and contains every movie and show you can think of.
The site layout is pretty simple. You can select popular content directly from the home page. If you are looking for more, you can explore by category and genre. You can also use the search function to find something specific.
The website also allows you to download videos to your device.
YesMovies lets you stream in both HD and 4K. However, to stream 4K, you need to register for a free account.
Functions:
Available without registration
No copy required
Download function available
4K quality with free account registration
Autoplay next
Website – https://yesmovies.ag/
7. AZMOVIES
AZ Movies is primarily a streaming website. On the home page of this site, you will find several sections for films. You can explore different sections like Favorites, Year, All Movies, Genre, etc.
If anyone is more interested in movies, AZMovies could use the server as a great alternative to putlockers.
Specifications
HD quality
No registration required
No credit card needed
Website – https://azm.to/
8. WATCH ONLINE SERIES
This is another Pirate Bay replacement you might like to consider. As the name suggests, this site is for TV shows only. Watch Online has everything from recent episodes to old shows. New content is updated fairly regularly.
Watch Online Series has a simple user interface. You can start streaming immediately. The home page displays recommended content. You can browse more using a variety of categories, including miniseries, new TV shows, and more.
You can also choose from many genres, including action, adventure, animation, biography, and more.
Watching the series online is supported by advertising. So you will come across pop-up ads here and there.
Specifications
Available without registration
No credit card required
HD streams
Website – https://watchtvseries.io/
9. POPCORN TIME
Popcorn Time is also a very popular streaming service and one of the best Putlocker alternatives. However, the site does not offer browser-based streaming, you can instead use their app for different devices. According to the website, the Popcorn Time app is available for Windows, macOS, Android TV, and Android smartphones.
Popcorn Time uses Torrents to stream free movies and shows. According to the information available on the site’s homepage, the Popcorn Time app uses sequential download to stream videos listed by multiple torrent sites, and third-party trackers can also be manually added.
Website – https://popcorntime.sh/
10. SUN FILMS
Although the name of the website only contains “movies”, you will also find all the popular TV shows here.
The site has a neat and easy-to-use design. The main body of the site contains the recommended content at the top. Scroll down to find popular movies and TV shows.
You can choose genres such as action, thriller, romance, country, etc. right on the home page. With the search tool, you can find something specific on your mind.
The site is supported by ads. Fortunately, there aren’t many annoying pop-ups to deal with.
Specifications
Boot function
HD streaming quality
No registration
No details required
Website – https://www.solarmovie.one
And One of the Most Popular – MoviesFlix
Movies flix is an infamous website known for releasing movies and different OTT series’ illegally online. The website provides a vast collection of illegal content for internet users. The website offers a wide variety of online content for free illegally and with ease. Not just the website, but using the website is also illegal. The website is blocked in some parts of India but to continue its illegal operations the website remains to operate with different domain names.
There are so many different cinema sites that you cannot count. Here we can show you some of those that didn’t make the list:GoMovies, GoStream, Me, GOMovies, SolarMovie, Mouflix, etc.
Why Piracy is Bad?
Well, you’ve read a huge amount of information about pirate sites, and even saw the normal reasons for using them. So why shouldn’t you end up doing this? Perhaps most people think a reason that it is illegal and punishable in many countries (not just fines) is not enough. But these are not the only reasons. These very sites, positioning themselves as those who do everything for people, in the same way, harm these people. Starting from malware, ending with losses of legal sites, because of which they cannot create even more content that we need so much.
Piracy Puts Ordinary Users At Risk
Microsoft has warned that miners may be hiding in free movies.
Pirate streaming services have seen a surge in inbound traffic. However, Microsoft warns users about the dangers of such resources.
Fans of various torrent sites are especially at risk. Most often this is just a fake for the most inattentive.
“Since today in many countries of the world there is a self-isolation regime, cybercriminals are closely monitoring the popularity of pirated resources and torrent sites,” said Microsoft.
“We tracked a campaign to distribute a malicious cryptocurrency miner. The attackers packed VBScript into a ZIP archive and passed it off as free movies.”
After installation, the miner loaded additional components in the background, one of which injected the DLL into the device’s memory. After that, the miner’s code was injected directly into the legitimate notepad.exe process.
IT Industry And Economy Are Stalled Because of Pirates
Research shows that piracy costs the economy tens of billions of dollars. The market value of unlicensed copies of software installed worldwide in 2017 was estimated at $46 billion.
Due to piracy, copyright holders receive less revenue for their content than they could. As a result, the profitability of the IT business is reduced and the growth rate of the entire industry slows down. There is also an indirect impact on the economy. Pirates do not pay taxes, and the state spends money to fight them. All this leads to the fact that the well-being of many people who are not directly connected with piracy suffers.
Let me remind you that Twift recommends refraining from using pirate sites and platforms and spending a little of your time and money on purchasing licensed products.
